Tucson official: Air Force won't pay for D-M groundwater cleanup now

Instead, if a cleanup is to be done there anytime soon, a nonprofit group seeking city approval to build a golf course as part of a larger development on the base will "need to secure funds from private sources or the federal government," Thomure said in a text message to the Star. If the group doesn't come up with the money to pay for the water cleanup, it won't get the golf course approval, he said. 

"We never had any commitment from the Air Force or the Department of Defense. Nor has the city ever claimed we did," Thomure said. "We've been explicit that the Air Force and the DOD have placed this (cleanup) site as a low priority and any action on their part would be years or decades out."

The nonprofit group, Warbird National, will raise the cleanup money if the golf course is approved, Jay Hedley, chairman of its governing board, promised in an interview with the Star.

"If the Air Force isn’t willing to do the cleanup and is unable to pay for the cleanup, in that case, Warbird National will pay for and manage the cleanup of the PFAS," said Hedley, a former Air Force fighter pilot.

He said he's confident about being able to get money for the cleanup because of the large array of contacts Warbird has already made in the philanthropic community and the large amount of interest the group has generated for what he calls a unique golf course development that will also include an education center, restaurants and other amenities.

"We've been working for a year with companies that do this for a living, that raise money," said Hedley, who declined to name them at this time. "What donors have told us is when we have the contract for the lease (on the golf course property), they are more than happy to support it. They don’t want to be named until this deal is done."

Exactly who will pay for the cleanup and when it will get done has been an unknown since city officials unveiled the potential tradeoff of water cleanup in return for a new golf course at a meeting of about 25 local officials, researchers and community activists on Sept. 11 at City Hall.

Golf course would feature retired jets

Warbird has made an elaborate proposal to the city for an 18-hole course that would come complete with retired Air Force jets at every hole's tee. The course would be designed by Rees Jones, a renowned golf course architect whose father, Robert Trent Jones, was a legendary golf course designer for many decades. Rees Jones has designed, renovated or restored more than 300 golf courses in his career, his company's website says.

"Warbird National Golf Course ... up close and personal with these combat jets, is what you will experience — 18 holes of patriotic wonder and awe. Picture teeing off on #1 from under the wing of the B-1 bomber that set the around-the-world speed record ... or teeing off on #15 in the shadow of the F-15 that shot down three enemy MiGs in two different wars," Warbird's website says.

The project at Davis-Monthan would also include a Center for Learning and Winning, or CLAW for short. It's aimed at providing education in science, technology, engineering and math for military and non-military youth in the Tucson community, Warbird's site says. 

At the Sept. 11 meeting, city officials said that on Tuesday, Sept. 22, the Tucson City Council will be asked to vote on a memorandum of understanding that will serve as the basis for negotiations for an agreement to let Warbird get reclaimed water for its new golf course and other amenities. In return, they and the city would come up with an agreement to clean up potentially cancer-causing PFAS compounds from groundwater underneath the air base. The pollution has migrated north of the base, into the city's central wellfield, reaching as far north as El Con Mall, city officials have said.

A draft copy of the memorandum says it will serve "as the basis for negotiating a subsequent, legally binding Intergovernmental Agreement" involving the city, Warbird and the Department of the Air Force.

Cleaned water would go to golf course 

Several people who attended the Sept. 11 meeting, which wasn't open to the public or press, told the Star afterward they came away with the impression that city officials believed that if the golf course were to be approved by the city, that would increase the chances of getting the Air Force to start a cleanup. City officials asked meeting participants not to discuss what was said until after the city could issue a news release about the project the following week.

Several attendees did discuss the meeting ahead of that time with the Star but only one went on record in advance of the news release .

PFAS, formerly used in military firefighting foam, has been known to exist in groundwater underneath Davis-Monthan for more than a decade, and in 2018 it became publicly known that the polluted water had migrated north off the base and contaminated a couple of city wells. But the Air Force has held off launching a cleanup of the water here, because it's dealing with contamination from its bases all over the country and in foreign countries, and in many of the other cities, residents are being served contaminated drinking water, which isn't the case in Tucson. Tucson has shut down all wells known to have PFAS. 

Catlow Shipek of the nonprofit Watershed Management Group said underlying the proposed agreement is the idea that the federal government would start cleaning up Tucson's polluted groundwater to supply Warbird with treated, reclaimed water. "Warbird happening was contingent on somebody treating the water," he said.

"That’s the whole premise to this deal. Within two years they would be treating water with federal water rights, put it into the reclaimed system and move it to the golf course," said Shipek, Watershed Management Group's policy and technical director. Cleaned-up groundwater beyond what's needed for the golf course would go into the city's reclaimed water system, officials have said. 

Cleanup here is low priority for Air Force

But late in the past week, Air Force officials told city officials that they would not at this time allocate any federal money for the cleanup because of the city's low priority, a source familiar with the discussions told the Star.

The Air Force has not yet responded to repeated requests from the Star to clarify its position on the PFAS cleanup and golf course issue in Tucson. Air Force spokeswomen at Davis-Monthan and in the Washington, D.C. area promised Friday to provide a comment as soon as possible.

In a second text message to the Star Friday, Thomure didn't directly respond to a question asking if that account of the Air Force saying "no" to city officials was accurate. He said only that the "Defense Department has consistently stated that there is no near-term funding for this part of the PFAS cleanup effort."

"The federal government can opt to fund any part of this project, should they choose," Thomure told the Star. "We have not assumed they will, nor have we stated that they will."

If no PFAS cleanup, 'no project'

"Warbird would need to secure funds from private sources or the federal government," Thomure said.  

And, he said Warbird must have funding for PFAS treatment and the project must have enforceable milestones in order to get approval.

"If there is no PFAS cleanup, there is no project — full stop," Thomure wrote in his text message.

In a newsletter to her constituents Friday, City Councilwoman Miranda Schubert, whose Ward 6 includes much of the polluted groundwater area near the base, wrote a long list of questions she wants discussed about this proposed memorandum of understanding (M.O.U.) at Tuesday's council meeting. 

Among them:

— Does PFAS cleanup under the base actually depend on the golf course?

— What remediation would occur without this agreement?

— Why isn't the Air Force a party to the M.O.U.?

— What alternatives have been considered for using or recharging the treated water?

— How does this proposal fit with PFAS cleanup investments already underway here, including existing ion exchange treatment and a new treatment facility near the airport?

— Who pays for the treatment infrastructure, golf course infrastructure and long-term operations and maintenance? Will Tucson Water customers bear any costs? (City officials have already said that Tucson Water ratepayers won't have to pay any of the cleanup tab or for the golf course operation.).

Goal: Generate money for vets, education

The golf course and the related projects would be built on about 500 acres the Air Force today leases from the city of Tucson, Warbird's Hedley said. The site would lie near the intersection of Irvington Road near Houghton Road on the far southeast side. It would be next to the Boneyard, the massive military aircraft storage and maintenance facility that's home of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group.

"Our mission is to use the golf as a way to generate revenue for veterans and educational programs for the city of Tucson," Hedley said. "Our goal is to donate at least 100 scholarships a year for kids in Tucson, for kids who want to go to Pima Community College and the UA. We want to keep the money local."

"We'll be mounting airplanes in a way they've never been mounted before. The clubhouse is designed to look like World War II hangars. In them, we will have event spaces, restaurants, board rooms."

'No doubt we can raise the money'

Hedley downplays the difficulty of rounding up the money to clean up the groundwater. He says it will come from the same kinds of sources Warbird will rely on to raise money to build the golf course project. That's even though the group's federal tax forms show their financial resources are very limited.

The group's federal form 990 for 2025, for instance, shows it had $115,000 in both assets and liabilities. In 2025, the group reported $20,400 in annual revenue and $58,500 in expenses. In 2024, the group reported $65,784 in revenue and $37,383 in expenses.

"I've never worked so hard on something. I feel happy to pay for it. I have no doubt we can raise the money; I know so many people who think this is the coolest thing they ever heard of," Hedley said.

"It's not billions of dollars for the project and cleanup. It's millions," he said. "To do the cleanup, we would hire the same companies Tucson Water works with. We'll pay for it."

Various people who attended the city's Sept. 11 meeting on the golf course-cleanup issue said they heard estimated cleanup costs of $10 million, $20 million and $30 million for the PFAS-tainted water under the base. City officials have always said they estimate the costs to remove PFAS all tainted groundwater in the city water system would be in the tens of millions of dollars.

The city's Tucson Airport Remediation Project, which cleans PFAS and other contaminants from polluted south-side groundwater, treats about 10 million gallons a day, Hedley said, while the PFAS cleanup at the base would treat about 1.7 million gallons a day.

"There’s zero profit motive for this. We are completely not Project Blue," Hedley said, referring to the controversial data centers project that Tucson declined to provide with water. "We're not doing this to make money for private profit."

'Seems like a creative solution'

Gary Woodard, a retired University of Arizona water researcher who attended the Sept. 11 meeting, said in principle he supports the idea of getting the groundwater cleaned in return for a golf course.

"I'm not a fan of new golf courses, but this seems like a creative solution to preventing the spreading of the pollution plume," Woodard said. "That's especially true now with the situation on the Colorado River," whose dwindling flows reduce Tucson's water supplies.  

"We can’t wait indefinitely for the Air Force to get around to it," Woodard added. "It will take longer to deal with and become more expensive. Waiting is not a good option. 

"As far as whether private sources could be tapped to fund this, I have no idea. I know nothing about Warbird and their ability to come up with the money."

Julia Fonseca, a retired top environmental official for Pima County, said she in general supports the idea of getting the water cleaned up in exchange for a golf course. She also attended that meeting.

"The salient thing here is that it creates a cone of depression in the aquifer to keep contamination from moving around," Fonseca said. "The water will be exported from the base into the reclaimed system and golf course. It would have the effect of curtailing the movement of the contaminated water. I think that’s the value of it." 

A cone of depression is a circular pattern of water table drawdown that results from excessive pumping. In most cases it's considered harmful to an aquifer but in this case such a cone could slow if not halt the movement of polluted groundwater from the Air Force base, experts say.

If the Air Force is not a party to this arrangement, it needs to be, to make it happen, Fonseca said.

"It sounds like a lot on the shoulders of Warbird. They have some well-meaning people. Maybe they've got connections. Who knows?" she said. "It’s very difficult to imagine this coming to fruition at this point. I don’t think there’s much harm in letting them try with the Defense Department."

'That's bribery' says opponent  

But Patty Overall, a longtime neighborhood and environmental activist in the Catalina Foothills, said she's now organizing her friends and activist cohorts to build a coalition opposed to the golf course-for-cleanup proposal.

'If you give us the golf course, we will clean up the water' — that’s bribery," Overall said. "This whole thing is just absurd. I don't care if it's private money. We do not have the water and it's a misuse of our land."